Amazon Scoops Up PillPack for $1 Billion
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) finally took the plunge into the pharmaceutical market with its approximately $1 billion acquisition of five-year-old PillPack, an online pharmacy startup based in Manchester, New Hampshire. Financial terms weren’t disclosed in the deal’s announcement, but on June 28, the day of the announcement, The Wall Street Journal quoted sources on the price. In April 2018, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) was reported to be in discussions with PillPack, and targeting a price under $1 billion, according to CNBC. Amazon was also said to be holding discussions with the company at the time. PillPack is an online pharmacy that delivers medications in pre-sorted dose packaging and... Read More »
Gilead Buys Kite Pharma to Diversify Portfolio
Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) finally found a target worth pursuing. The pharmaceutical company, perhaps best known for its high-priced hepatitis-C drugs, Harvoni and Solvadi, placed its bets on Kite Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: KITE), hoping to cash in on the biotech’s promising technology for fighting cancer. Gilead announced the acquisition of Kite Pharma for $180.00 per share, valuing the company at approximately $11.9 billion. The price represents a 29% premium to Kite’s closing price on August 25, 2017. Kite Pharma is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops and commercializes novel cancer immunotherapy products. It is developing a pipeline of engineered... Read More »
Chinese Investor Group Buys SciClone
The Pharmaceutical sector has been relatively slow on the M&A front this year. U.S. investors seem content to sit on the sidelines and wait for something to happen, such as the rumored takeover of Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) by Pfizer. (NYSE: PFE) Only 43 deals have been announced through June 9, down nearly 47% compared with the same time last year. Then the Chinese investors arrived. On June 8th, 2017, SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: SCLN), a specialty pharmaceutical company that provides therapies for oncology, infectious diseases, and cardiovascular disorders, was purchased in a going-private transaction by a consortium of buyers. The... Read More »Where Have All the Big Pharma Deals Gone?
The Pharmaceutical sector has experienced a dearth of big deals so far this year. In Q1:16, 40 transactions with pharmaceutical targets were announced, for a total of $46.2 billion. In the first quarter of 2017 (through March 28), only 24 deals (-40%) for pharmaceutical targets have been announced, with a combined total of $10.1 billion (-78%). One factor behind the drop in deals is obvious. The sector came under legislative and consumer scrutiny during the presidential election in 2016, as candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each decried high prices charged by drug manufacturers, and each vowed to do something about it once elected. President Trump repeated his campaign promise to... Read More »Schedule a demo
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